Strollerderby : fetal development

New Risks Associated With Elective Deliveries

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

With induced labors up a whopping 125 percent since 1989, it’s clear that many preterm labors are not medically necessary. And this is particularly true around the holidays, when many parents schedule deliveries in time for a tax deduction or to fit in with a crazy travel schedule.

It’s understandable why parents have traditionally believed it safe to schedule a delivery anytime after the 34th week, since until recently obstetricians believed that everything except for the baby’s size was fully developed by then. But new research shows that those last weeks are more important than previously believed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that “for each week a baby stayed in the womb between 32 and 39 weeks, there is a 23% decrease in problems such as respiratory distress, jaundice, seizures, temperature instability and brain hemorrhages.” Furthermore, it’s now clear that pinpointing the exact age of a fetus is very difficult; a fetus believed to be in the 34th week may only be in the 32nd.

Doctors must do their part to make sure parents know of the risks of an unnecessary preterm birth. The medical director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital admits that it’s simply easier and less time-consuming to “cave” to parents’ request for an elective delivery than to inform them of the benefits of waiting for a full term birth. And according to the March for Dimes, some obstetricians fudge the requirements to qualify parents for a "medically necessary" preterm birth.

But with increasing research like the above study, some hospitals are now wisely requiring parents to sign a consent form before scheduling a delivery before the 39th week. F. Sessions Cole, the director of newborn medicine at St. Louis Children's Hospital, urges parents to trust their babies. "The idea is that somehow, if you're in complete control of the delivery, then only good things will happen," Cole said. "But that's categorically wrong. The baby and the uterus know best."

Photo: mothering.com

Why Insure Pre-Term Elective C-Sections?

They Say: Fat-Eating Pregos Make for Fat-Loving Kids

JeanneSager — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:39:00 GMT

Tired of hearing your mom comment on the size of your butt? Tell her it's her fault. A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience says women who indulge in fat-laden foods during pregnancy are setting the stage for parenting a child who will constantly struggle with his or her weight.

Researchers say the developing fetus' brain is essentially being hard-wired to crave fatty foods as their moms eat for two . . . or four. The study was performed on rats rather than humans, but it makes good sense. What are kids eating when they're inside us? Exactly what we're eating. So wouldn't it make sense that they'd develop a taste for those foods?

My father used to joke that he considered leaving my mother if she served one more plate of spinach during her pregnancy (she had to get that iron somehow), and wouldn't you know it - one of my favorite foods is a nice big chunk of spinach pie oozing with feta and wrapped in delicate phyllo dough.

Although my propensity to pop M&Ms would point to plenty of desserts served after those spinach-rich dinners . . .

Image: Raising Kids

They Say: Lead Bullets Make Game Risk for Pregnant Women, Kids

They Say: Text Messaging Can Fight Childhood Obesity

Save Money: Kids Eat Free at Restaurants . . . Well, Some of Them

Putting Swollen Ankles into Perspective

Amy Kuras — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:34:00 GMT

I'm one of those people who firmly believe pregnancy sucks. I've been lucky, both times, to experience mild nausea, major insomnia and swollen ankles and that's about it. And yet, oh did I complain.

Had I read this article in the New York Times on cancer during pregnancy, I hope would have been shamed into shutting right up. Because as uncomfortable and sometimes outright miserable as pregnancy is, the prospect of facing your own mortality, the possibility of harming your baby, and the hell that is cancer treatment all at once is something no one should have to go through.

But they do – as women conceive children later in life they are also running into disease that tend to strike people later, such as cancer, during their pregnancies. Also, the normal life cycle of a woman's childbearing years has changed. It used to be that girls started their periods around 13 to 15 years of age and then went into menopause in their late 30s – now, puberty can begin as early as 9 years old and menopause typically occurs around age 50. Exposure to hormone shifts for longer might be causing more cancer.

Interestingly, while doctors typically suggest therapuetic abortion because it makes the cancer easier to treat aggressively, cancer treatment while pregnant is possible. Even the most pessimistic studies show that chemo causes birth defects in 14 to 19 percent of cases, and other studies show them in only 4 percent.

In any case, it's a terrifying thing to face and the women profiled just amazed me. Anybody who thinks women are weaker just isn’t paying attention.

Cocktails Messing Up Male Junk

Madeline Holler — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:35:00 GMT

A dangerous cocktail is killing off sperm and causing malformed penises and it's not the kind of cocktail you stir and sip. It's also not the kind of cocktail you can avoid.

Researchers, who wanted to understand the rise in low sperm count and malformed male sex organs, are finding that endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which are harmless alone and in small doses, are killing off sperm and messing with development when mixed (in great quantities) in a developing fetus's environment.

The study, conducted on rats in Denmark, tested three chemicals already shown to be harmless individually: the drug flutamide and the pesticides vinclozolin and procymidone.

What they found was that prenatal exposure to a mix of the three chemicals significantly increased the number of baby rats born with malformed external sex organs and also developed some female characteristics.

The researchers say this cocktail effect should be taken into account before declaring individual chemicals as harmless.

Pregcellent: Maternal Antibodies May Be Linked to Autism

Kelly Mills — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:27:00 GMT

Researchers are looking at a link between a mother's immune system during pregnancy and the development of autism in children. They found that antibodies in the blood of mothers of kids with autism bind to fetal brain cells, and may be responsible for problems in brain development. This was observed in mothers of children with a particular kind of "late-onset" autism, where development seems fine up to a point, and then switches to a loss in language and social skills. There's hope that this finding will ultimately result in prenatal tests and interventions.

So why does a fetal event result in autism that shows up much later? Researchers aren't entirely sure, but there may be more to the story. The senior author of the study says, "It's possible that early exposure to maternal antibodies sets in motion a biological path to autism with the behavioral outcomes not apparent until much later. It's also possible that an environmental exposure sometime after birth could be required to set this process in motion." But this study does show that research may need to focus more on the earliest gestational events, even when the autism doesn't manifest until much later in life.

Stress For You Might Mean Schizophrenia For Your Baby

Amy Kuras — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:02:00 GMT

Oh so many times during this pregnancy, I've come across a story that makes me want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

Aside from all the freaky stories about parasitic twins and two-headed babies my fellow Strollerderbians are obsessed with, there are all the "don't do X when you're pregnant" stories. Many of which I already have done (coffee, anyone?), and some of which aren’t even my own damn fault.

For example, undergoing major stress during the first trimester of pregnancy. Turns out that undergoing a traumatic event during the first few months of pregnancy can cause schizophrenia for your baby later in life. The study looked at women who experienced the death of a relative, or a close relative being diagnosed with cancer or having a heart attack or stroke, and found that the death of a relative during first trimester caused a 67 percent increase in the rate of schizophrenia.

Having a relative undergo a serious illness didn’t have the same effect, nor did having a death happen any other time but the first trimester. While we didn't have a death in the family, a close relative (who stresses me out in the best of times) was diagnosed with cancer shortly after I found out I was pregnant.

Researchers speculate that this happens because chemicals released in the mother's body in response to stress affect the fetus' developing brain in some way, and that the effect seems limited to the first trimester because the protective barriers that exists between mother and baby aren’t fully formed.

Gah. Whatever. I want my sterile isolation bubble.

Short Babies More Prone to Later Suicide

Karen Murphy — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Short People got no reason
To live

They got little hands
And little eyes
And they walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth

Apparently, short people have taken these lyrics to heart: a new Swedish study finds that babies, especially boys, who were short at birth (under 18.5 inches) had a more than double risk of later suicide.

Talk about cutting your life short!

Uh, sorry, I'll stop with the short jokes now. (By the way? My younger son was 18 inches at birth)

The study looked at national (Swedish) birth data from 1973 through 1980, and suicide-attempt data up to 1999, and found a correlation between birth length (also birth weight to a lesser degree) and suicide attempts, especially violent suicides. The theory, then, is that brain chemistry is affected by fetal growth. Um, well, of course it is. Everything can be linked, somehow, to fetal development, at least those things that aren't strictly environmental (except fetal development can affect what the body does with environmental influences, so we're back there again, aren't we?).

I'm pretty sure about all we can do for kids who happened to be short at birth is to love them and hope they have a good life, same as we'd be doing anyway (and same as we do for kids an inch longer or whatever at birth), but the thought is to provide extra reason for good prenatal nutrition and care. The suicide link is thought to be caused by lower-than-usual levels of serotonin, which develops during the 2nd trimester, so as usual we're blaming mom's drug use, alcohol use, or steadfast refusal to "eat for two". Though I'm guessing that plenty of shorter babies are born to mothers who do everything "right".

So is this one more thing to worry about needlessly? Or is it another validation that we should be doing all we can to create happy, healthy babies?

Photo: a.abcnews.com

Pregnant? You're Probably Doing it Wrong

Amy Kuras — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:44:00 GMT

Hey pregnant women! Your kid's not even born yet and you've probably already made him or her crazy, fat and infertile!

In the interest of full disclosure, I am six months pregnant and read this LA Times article about how the tiniest thing can affect fetal health unto generations while eating a sandwich composed of turkey lunchmeat, Brie, and conventionally grown apples (although I admit I did nuke the turkey for 30 seconds to zap any lurking listeria bugs). It was also a few hours after downing a peppermint mocha. With caffeine! And sugar! My baby will have three heads!

Now, I understand that what affects the mother affects the baby, and it makes sense to minimize risks where you can. But my experience through two pregnancies, and those of several pals, is that pregnancy is anxiety-producing enough without giving us bunches of new reasons to worry.
There's all the concerns about miscarriage, birth defects and lead in every frickin' thing, not to mention the "am I-even-going-to-be-a-good-mom" terror with the first pregnancy and the "what the-hell-am-I-thinking-with-another-kid" worries with all subsequent. Stories like this one just hand the already-neurotic a big old free pass to be completely unbearable for nine months and make those of us with a more relaxed approach worry we've doomed our kids to a lifetime of misery by not encasing ourselves in a protective bubble.
Makes a pregnant lady want to binge-drink.